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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 212372" data-attributes="member: 2013">Wow.I know there are a lot of good lists and generators out there, but I have always preferred my own methodology...While I am no linguist, I amd a polyglot and love languages and have some idea of how different languages sound.I tend to pull fantasy names from my own knowledge of languages based on culture - I decide what kind of "feel" the names will have and go from there...A Germanic feel is quite easily accomplished with gutteral vowels and hard consonants.  Knowing German doesn't hurt.A "Steppe Nomads/Magyar/Atilla the Hun" feel is tougher... you try to have "front/back" vowel agreement within a name (front vowels are sounded in the front of the mouth, back vowels are sounded in the back of the mouth), usually with an s, z, n, or k somewhere in the name.  I am greatly helped here by fluency in Hungarian.A "Romantic" feel (Romanian, Spanish, French, Italian) is done by liberal use of vowels and keeping mostly to the softer consonants (l, n, m, r, but not k, t, and so forth)Vikingesque languages tend to be one or two syllable names, most of which are fairly well-known to American English speakers - names like Erik, Olaf, Sven, Ingrid, Helga and so forth.  A character's surname is easy... add -son or -dotter (depending on gender) to the first name of the father.  Hence we see Erik Olafson or Helga Liefsdotter.A polynesian islands feel can be done by consonant-vowel syllables (always consonant-vowel or vowel alone... no double consonants and no syllables end in consonants).Bonus nicknames and/or surnames for all languages are fairly straightforward... the nickname could stem from an accomplishment, a trait, or a homeland.  We might see Corfid (a bard) become Corfid Lutestrummer ("stop calling me that!  My name is Corfid Snotpockets!  Hm... Lutestrummer DOES have a better ring to it...").Won't touch "asian feel" as there are different feels for different languages and I don't know enough about the differences to give a lot of authenticity.EDIT: I like the previous post about the meaning of the names, but as far as making "Asian sounding names" (not after translation to English but something like Tanake Watanabe) I won't go near it due to ignorance on my part of the way such languages work.Using these examples as templates, I can create "rules" for other fantasy cultures...Elves - Even more romantic than romance languages; tend to stay away from the letter "u" except when following "q".  Never use a one-syllable name when you can think of a four-syllable name.  Names should flow easily and sound almost musical.Dwarves - Less gutteral than German, but "harder" - make liberal use of lots of "k's", "t's" and hard "g's".  I tend to make dwarven somewhat agglutenative (i.e., instead of "Karadtur the Destroyer" I prefer "Karadturkelbrinnkaer"), but that's just personal taste.Gnomes - The best rule for gnomes (at least as described in 3e) is to avoid convention completely.  They're the ones with names like Eoin4o3aw (the 4 and 3 are silent).  They get lots and lots of names.Halflings - I tend toward simple Englishy names with slight entymological twisting (e.g., instead of William Smith I might migrate W's to F's to get Filliam Smith then migrate the -iam ending to -iard to get Filliard Smith then migrate the "sm" to a "st" to get Filliard Stith and finally migrate the "th" to a "pps" to finish with Filliard Stipps).Half-Elves - Get either human or elvish names (depending on who rasied them).Half-Orcs - Human names or orcish names (again depending on who raised them).  Orcish in my world has only three vowels (a, o, and u) but has two "dialects" - the type of consonants used depends on whether these are above-ground orcs (in which case the language uses "softer" consonants like elvish) or below-ground orcs (in this case, the language uses "harder" consonants like dwarvish).In general, I try to compose language by mixing and matching rules for:1.) What vowels are used?2.) What consonants are used?3.) Are there rules for vowel/consonant placement (e.g., a consonant-vowel rule for every syllable or perhaps that a k never follows a t or a b)?4.) Is the sound of the language gutteral, musical, or normal?5.) Do the names themselves have intrinsic meaning?6.) Do the syllables themselves have intrinsic meaning?7.) Is the language agglutenative?8.) Is the focus more on family (Erickson) or individual (Lutestrummer)?9.) Can I apply "entymological drift" from an existing language?  If so, what are the rules of drift?10.) What is the "name re-use" rate?  How are individuals with the same name differentiated?  How large an population does the culture cover OR how many names does the culture use?  A large culture might have a very high name re-use rate.  OTOH, a small culture might always want unique names.  Small cultures that do not value unique names or large cultures that often re-use names tend to have smaller pools of names, so the names can be shorter.  Often nicknames are used to differentiate individuals.  OTOH, a large culture that tries not to have many duplicate names (e.g., the US circa 2000) will have a lot of "twists" on a given name and will have a larger pool of names and hence names will tend to be slightly longer or a person will have multiple names.Using this as a general guide has made campaigning for me much easier and helps me quickly create believable names.  I guess it's just easier for me to come up with something off the cuff by using a couple of rules for "how it should sound" than try to look something up without having an idea of "why does it sound the way it does?"  I feel it helps me get more consistently realistic-sounding names across the board - including giving a consistent "feel" to a given culture.My 2 coppers.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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